Chinua Achebe: Vultures

The vultures in the poem are real birds of prey but they represent some people.
Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian writer but has a traditional English-speaking education.

The vultures have an unpleasant diet but they care for each other. Achebe shows how
the concentration camp commandant who has burnt bodies during the day buys
chocolate for his children “tender offspring” on his way home.

The conclusion is ambiguous:

 Achebe tells us to “praise bounteous providence” that even the worst

creatures has a little goodness, “a tiny glow-worm tenderness”

BUT
 He ends in despair, it is the little bit of “kindred love” (love for each other)
which allows the “perpetuity of evil”. This means that the evil person can
think that he is not totally bad. “Commandant at Belsen” reminds us that
Adolf Hitler loved animals and children.

The poem is in free verse and has short lines with no stop at the end. There is no
pattern of stress.

Achebe moves from

 images of things which are actually present

 to the imagined scene of the commandant buying chocolate for his
children
 to the last section with the metaphor the “glow-worm tenderness” in the
“icy caverns of a cruel heart”.

There are words in the poem that Achebe uses in surprising ways. We read of the
commandant “going home…with fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his
hairy nostrils”. He does not want the smell but it will not go away. This is something
that he cannot command.

As you think or write about the first part of the poem, try to describe in your own
words the different things that the vultures eat and also look for evidence of the birds’
love for each other. The vulture symbolizes anyone or anything that benefits from
another’s suffering. The poem does not show the vultures sympathetically like the
scorpion in Ezekiel’s poem.

Adapted from www.universalteacher.org.uk

A M Taylor
Lincs EMAS
 Chinua Achebe: Vultures

 Is the poem about vultures or does the poet use vultures to talk about some
kinds of people?

 How does the poet try to make you feel disgust for the vultures? Is this
fair?

 The ending of the poem is ambiguous – the poet recommends both

“providence” and “despair”. Which of these endings do you think the poet
feels more strongly?

 Achebe talks about Belsen, the Nazi death camp – do you think this is a
powerful way to suggest evil or do you think that some people do not
know what Belsen was?

Keywords

birds of prey birds that kill other animals for food

represent to be a symbol of something

concentration camp a place where prisoners of war live, usually in very

bad conditions

despair having no hope at all

benefits to get something good from something

suffering pain of your body or mind

disgust very strong dislike for something

Adapted from www.universalteacher.org.uk

A M Taylor
Lincs EMAS
Adapted from www.universalteacher.org.uk
A M Taylor
Lincs EMAS